


be those seasons, made up and undone

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comics/Movie Crossover, F/M, Going On Facebook: A Darcy Lewis Fic Exchange, adult relationships are hard, deaf!Clint, jane is darcy's superhero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week into living at Stark Tower, Darcy Lewis wakes up underneath a table. It’s a perfectly fine table, more than tall enough to be sleeping under, but she’s trying to figure out why she’s underneath it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be those seasons, made up and undone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [getgeekywithit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/getgeekywithit/gifts).



> My contribution to the Going on Facebook: Darcy Lewis Fic Exchange (also known as "I said, 'we should have our own thing' and all of a sudden, I'm running one. WTF?") and I was lucky enough to match myself up with getgeekywithit, a wonderful cheerleader in all things who had no idea that the fic I was bitching about was for her.
> 
> To write this, I read a lot of comics. The wonderful thing about the Marvel Movie-verse is that you can prod at the comics for inspiration, and bend it the way you need to into the ways you think it should work in the movie-verse.
> 
> There is a small warning for some brainwashing in the last bit. No worse than what has already been seen in canon.

A week into living at Stark Tower, Darcy Lewis wakes up underneath a table. It’s a perfectly fine table, more than tall enough to be sleeping under, but she’s trying to figure out why she’s underneath it.

She’s been in town a week, and it’s mostly been spent with Jane in her lab, or doing paperwork in a closet that Agent Hill scrounge a desk for, or finding the nearest place to buy Pop-Tarts for Thor. It has not been spent in many ways that would warrant sleeping on the floor. Jane has a perfectly nice spare room. It has the biggest bed she has ever slept in, and the most comfortable one as well.

Jane’s being nice, she knows, browbeating SHIELD into letting Darcy have her assistant job again. Darcy had a job, a real one, in her field and everything, and then that jackass governor lost his election because he was siphoning off the pension plans, and Darcy lost her job managing the volunteers. And then she lost her apartment and was about to move back home in disgrace like most of her peers when Jane came the rescue.

Jane is her very favorite superhero. Jane rights Darcy’s wrongs, her personal avenger of employment and housing opportunities. Darcy may be still a little drunk. And she’s still underneath a table in the pitch-dark Avenger common area. Her eyes adjust to the lack of light and she can see others asleep in various contortions. Natasha appears to be sleeping on the top of a couch and that couch appears to be holding Thor, with Jane wrapped in his arms. She’s so tiny against him; she looks like his very favorite childhood doll. Although Thor probably didn’t have a doll as a child. Maybe a stuffed hammer.

Wriggling a bit, she tries to move out from underneath the table (it’s a very nice table, she can see why she picked it) but oh, hey, she’s trapped. A heavy arm traps her and one of her legs is between someone else’s. Oh, she thinks, that’s why I’m underneath a table. Drunk Darcy wanted privacy.

From her vantage point from the floor she counts down the assorted Avengers; Tony and Pepper on a chair, Bruce sitting with his head tilted back against an ottoman, Steve on the other side, doing much the same, but with less dishevelment. Bruce looks like he passed out, Steve looks like he got tired of waiting for everyone else to wake up.

So okay, Drunk Darcy crawled underneath a table for privacy with Clint. That’s way more than acceptable, Sober Darcy decides. The heavy, gorgeous arm tightens around her, and Clint tells her in a sleepy voice to stop moving. Little bits of the night come back to her, slow easy smiles and trading bad pickup lines back and forth. Lots and lots of shots with increasingly silly names. She falls back asleep with a contented, smug smile, enjoying the warmth. The floor isn’t that comfortable, but the company sure is.

She learns real quick over the next month the following things: Thor is not allowed within fifty feet of any cupcake shop, no matter how much him saying, “They are so tiny! And tasty!” is made of sheer epicness; Bruce would prefer to be a hermit but no one, particularly Tony, will ever let him be; Jane’s Pop-Tart of choice has changed to the Limited Edition Mixed Berry flavor and it will be very upsetting when it goes away; and Clint Barton is the most earnest asshole she has ever met.

It’s fantastic. It’s like Manhattan is some sort of mythical wonderland: a good job, great accommodations and regular sex. These are things that don’t typically happen all at once in Darcyland.

“Who wears a red suit?” Jane asks. Darcy has taken a lot of trouble to get Jane out of the tower. It’s actually really hard to do, because between science, Thor, and a never-ending supply of coffee, Jane has no reason to leave. But Darcy has some spare cash after her loan payment and has shoe envy after watching Pepper prance (okay, competently walk) around in the most beautiful things on the planet. And Darcy doesn’t even care about shoes that much. She can find knock offs somewhere in New York, and Jane has to see the sun at least once a week so she doesn’t get a vitamin d deficiency and get whatever the equivalent of scurvy is, that would be tragic.

“Where do you see a guy in a red…” Darcy starts and then it becomes obvious that yes, that is a man in a red suit sitting in a car across the street from them, “Yes, that is a red suit.” The man opens the car door and steps out. If it weren’t red, it would be very dapper, but he really just looks like a lost real estate agent. They shrug it off and laugh, entering another overpriced store in search of some deals.

It’s another fruitless endeavor, and maybe Darcy should just buy ice cream with her meager surplus, because that’s all she can afford. They basically walk in and walk out because she can feel that her credit limit is far too low for the establishment. Red suit is still outside, staring up at the buildings, total rookie mistake.

“Don’t look up, it makes you look like a tourist!” Darcy yells at him. It’s only polite, really. Don’t want the guy to be prey for pickpocket and have that ruin his whole vacation.

“What?” he says distractedly. The guy looks like he should fill the suit better, and has really obnoxious giant sunglasses.

“Staring up at the buildings is a mistake. You’ll bump into people and make them really upset,” Darcy of course, did not know this from experience, no not at all. “And really, it just means you miss everything.”

“I’m just trying to find a building. Cross Technological Enterprises. I think my GPS screwed up” He looks back at his car disdainfully, “You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”

Darcy and Jane look at each other, “Sorry,” Jane replies good naturedly, “New ourselves.”

“Yeah, and all we have to do to get back is look for STARK and there we are. Easy peasy.” Darcy laughs, “We should probably get back.” The man looks at them with an unreadable expression, because he’s wearing stupid sunglasses.

“Thanks for the advice then,” he grunts out and walks back to his car. Which is probably for the best, because that jacket was just too loud to live.

They’ve got a pretty casual thing going, for all that they see each other almost every day. One or the other will show up at the others door, and they’ll throw on a movie that that neither will remember watching, or they’ll end up in each others lap in the common area. And she swears up and down that she’s not normally this much a fish, but drinking features fairly heavily into the Avenger social circle. Not to excess, not even Tony, but enough that she thinks she’s back in the dorm, except she’s not sneaking wine coolers into her mini-fridge anymore, she’s taking shots with Clint Barton, Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov, who looks at her like she’s figuring out the most ironic and suitable way to kill Darcy when she least expects it.

But hey, the drinks are free, and whatever, Natasha is free to look at her.  
Tonight though, it’s her couch in the little suite that Tony gave her. It’s actually not all the impressive, for all the luxury that the suites have. It’s got a more industrial feel to it; the open loft floor plan still wigs her out (“I should not be able to see my couch from my bed. It’s a studio. Why can’t we just call it what it is. A very large studio apartment.”) But she’s working on it. She can even remember what she called up to watch, she’s half asleep against Clint, who is rubbing circles into her arms and shoulders.

He’s a tactile creature, and so is she, once she gets comfortable with a person. His fingers are rough and calloused, and catch on her clothes. He takes more care over her skin, where even the light touches are breathtaking. She leans up to kiss him, fingers against his cheek and down his neck.

Nothing better than a guy who knows what he wants, and he pulls her into his lap, starts to work on the buttons of her work shirt.

“What’s Cross Technological Enterprises?” she asks, remembering earlier in the day. Clint flusters on the fourth button, tries to cover his unusually fumbling fingers by kissing smooth lips into the skin just in-between her breasts, his stubble catching and making her gasp. She repeats her question, because really, anything that causes him to skip? Worth knowing.

“Some tech firm. Stark’s competition ever since he stopped making weapons other than himself. I think they do a lot of medical devices.” He doesn’t look at her, just continues to press against her neck, trace the line of her shoulders with his fingertips, “Why? Decided that we’re not a good enough workplace for you?”

“Oh well, the work is dull but the perks are outstanding.” Darcy tilts her head, letting him have better access to her neck, “No, some guy in the ugliest red suit stopped us today to ask where it was.” And again, he stills, his thumb over her collarbone.”

“Red suit?”

“Yeah, like something Stark would wear if he ever abandoned his sense of taste.”

“I wasn’t aware Tony had taste. He has people who have taste.” Whatever it was that he stumbled over, it’s in the past, and his arm snakes around her to rest at the small of her back under her shirt as he finishes unbuttoning it.

She works for SHIELD now, access to a thousand people with very hush-hush qualifications, gophers and minions at beck and call, and Jane tells her to find the nearest hardware store to pick up supplies. Because Jane isn’t letting some shit from MIT (Tony Stark) build her jack shit.

Jane is alliterative and expressive in her swearing after the 36th hour or so of living off of coffee, Red Bull and Twizzlers. Darcy knows this from experience. But combine that with needing nuts, bolts and an impact wrench and Jane is adamant that only Darcy, brilliant, resourceful and “I DONT WANT TO FILL OUT FORMS FOR A SCREWDRIVER” can handle buying the goods.

She’s being followed. Not being an expert at the whole sneaky spy shit, she can’t actually see whoever is following her, but you don’t grow up too fast too young without knowing what its like to have eyes pinned to you. Big city and she wasn’t going anywhere where there weren’t a lot of people around, and maybe she’d call a car to pick her up. As if the wrench would slow her down.

No one has told her what to do if she’s being followed, and like an idiot, when she checks for her phone, it’s not anywhere in her bag or pockets and she flashes on where she left it. Oh her desk, in the lab, back at the tower. She ducks into the store she had located earlier and assesses while she shops. There’s no feeling in the back of her head while she’s here, no gnawing in her stomach after she pays and steps back out.

Either whoever it was lost interest or was just a person going the same way. It’s a wary trip back to the tower and by the time she gets back to the lab, she’s written it off as paranoia and tries to tell herself that this is a normal response to moving into a big city. Everyone watches and nobody sees. What’s the point in saying anything, really?

No matter where they end up at night, she sleeps alone, waking up under tables notwithstanding. It’s just easier that way, not having to wake up and trace lines and morning conversations, or talk about something other than their immediate day and what blew up. If she sleeps alone, there’s just a lot less that has to be dealt with. But damn if it isn’t getting harder when she leaves or when he places a last kiss on her head before heading back to his suite.

She’s never been the stay the night sort, and she wonders when that will change. Or if she’s just been fed line after line of all encompassing, life changing love that will make her turn back into an adolescent. But it’s not like Clint is protesting too much either. Whatever it is, it’s working for them and their bundled issues. He’s not always around, either on missions or he’s on call for the Avengers, or out fighting. It’s weird to see the guy you are dating on the nightly news fighting when you’ve also seen what else those muscles and that finely tuned sense of movement can do.

She hasn’t found that crazy-making love, but she’s found something rather nice and baffling.

Most days are the same. Sometimes she goes out with Clint, brave the streets of New York in search of oddballs and pockets of strange. They share a taste of the surreal and the inexplicable realities of major cities. But most days, Jane produces a lot of paperwork, a lot results and findings to collate, to organize, sometimes to shred and sometimes to piece back together because Jane was wrong and didn’t mean for that one to be shredded and she doesn’t have a backup. Darcy is just so happy that the confidential recycling hadn’t been burned yet. Her Jane, so brilliant and yet so narrow in her focus that even her results can get in the way of her journey to find.

It might actually be why she and Thor get along past that initial attraction. Thor provides a lens for her that she can’t replicate in a lab, a way of looking at the world that puts everything a bit askew, a bit blurred around the edges. Jane was so cause and effect that Thor’s magic just changes everything.

They weren’t friends before Thor. Friendly, sure, congenial and pleasant (okay, Darcy had sort of delighted in driving Jane to the roof) but after those days in the desert, the world had shifted for all of them and they only had each other, Jane and Erik and Darcy, and that had bonded them all together.

The science crew have bugged out for the afternoon, citing, okay she didn’t actually pay attention, so she’s just going with because reasons. It’s the sciences, they do what they want. They’ll work for three days straight on nothing but coffee and Twizzlers or they’ll decide that what they really need is an Xbox tournament. So she’s taking her unexpected free time to the streets and eating out in the October air at an actual restaurant, rather than some take out joint that she brings back to the tower to eat at a lab table.

It’s a crisp day, and she loves digging out her long sleeved shirts and her hats, and soon it will be back to ugly sweater weather, but right now the sun warms her cheeks, and it might as well be her favorite season for it. She’s reading on the tablet that had been thrown at her during her second day back interning.

“Is that StarkTech? Is it even out yet?” A man asks from behind her. Darcy slouches in her chair, trying to make herself invisible.  
But the part of her that says that it’s only polite to respond to a direct question wins out, “It is, and no, it isn’t.” She turns to look at the man talking at her, “Oh hey, I’ve met you. Suit guy!”

He’s still wearing a red suit, but this one is dark enough to almost be russet, and looks more GQ that real estate. Still the sunglasses, though, and they are still ugly as sin. He mouth quirks up and he mouths the words suit guy to himself, “How’d you get your hands on one?”

“I work for one of the scientists in the tower, and it was handed to me to test,” that should be sufficiently vague enough of an answer.

“My company is working on a new tablet too, geared towards doctors offices though, not general consumers.”

“Your company? The building you were looking for the other day?” Darcy raises her eyebrows, unimpressed, “You can’t see it, and I’m not about to give away company secrets. You are a real piss-poor corporate espionage type. I mean, I know just asking outright is a technique, but I’m way better than that.”

“No, no, nothing like that.” He smiles at her, and she wonders if it’s the type of smile that actually reaches his eyes. He pulls a case out of the coat pocket, opens it and hands her a card, “Just saying that if Stark thinks you make a good test dummy, then there is a place for you at Cross.”

Oh. He’s hitting on her, trying to give his number. She’s way less interested in this conversation now, “Sorry, I don’t take job offers from strange men, and I’m seeing someone.” She jerks her head, telling him to scram before turning back to her food and her tablet.

He exhales loudly, “Sorry, just, hold on to the card in case you change your mind.” Darcy picks up the card and drops it into her bag, not even bothering to look back at the guy or it.

A moment later, she shifts the screen on the tablet to look behind her, and he’s gone. Good riddance.

*

Clint’s been on assignment for three days somewhere else. He says it’s a milk run, just surveillance, nothing really to worry about. Before he leaves, she wonders just how much she’s supposed to feel worried. He’s obviously good at his work, he’s still alive, and yeah, it gnaws at her gut a little, but he’s so confident about it that she shrugs it off.

He comes back while Darcy’s doing paperwork in her apartment, since Jane’s just been muttering equations underneath her breath and gets worked up whenever Darcy makes a noise. Even just moving her chair back broke Jane’s rhythm, so Darcy scampered up to her room.

“God damn it, where did that damn fucking highlighter go?” she yells when she thinks she’s alone, uprooting her bag on the table and separating out the contents. It doesn’t help that Clint’s a sneaky fuck and she never hears him come in, doesn’t hear his steps, only feels the familiar weight of his arms as they slide down her curves and across her hips and his breath against her neck.

They stay like this for a moment and Darcy runs a hand through his hair, but then he moves and picks out her highlighter from the mess on the table, “That what you are looking for?”

“It can wait, I suppose.” And what exactly does it say that he’s obviously just gotten back from whatever debriefing he needed to do. When she takes the highlighter she can feel the tension running through him, and she lets him back her up against the table and try to loosen that rough energy against her lips.

When she breaks, because breathing, he picks something else out of the pile. In truth, Darcy’s forgotten about the business card and she watches as Clint inspects it, holding in concern as he runs his fingers against the card. He’s testing the thickness and she watches as his fingers raise just a hair over a portion.  
“When did you get this?” he asks, his voice a razors edge.

“Few days ago. That guy in the red suit found me again. He’s a horrible flirt.” She ducks her head and purses her lips, “Jealous that someone’s flirting with me when you aren’t here?”

“This is the first time he’s approached you since that day?” all that tense energy is back in his frame and he’s taking care not to intimidate her, but that’s intimidating in itself, “Anything strange? At all?”

“I…uh….” Darcy loses her train of thought, “I um, thought I was being watched earlier. When Jane sent me out for power tools? But when I left the store everything seemed okay. I was being paranoid.”

“I need you to tell me these things.” Clint says, again, so very careful not to touch her, even moving back on his heels so that Darcy can maneuver herself from against the table where she can breathe. “I need you to tell me these things so I can keep you safe, Darce.”

“Keep me safe?” her voice raises and her mind just whirls, “Against the feeling of being watched and men hitting on me? Since when does that ever happen? I’ve been dealing with that since I was twelve, Clint. It’s not something I think terribly much about anymore, other than it sucks and it’s constant. It’s a disappointment every time I’m just having a conversation and boom, there’s a pickup line or worse, there’s touching. There’s a reason I carry a fucking taser, after all.”

Clint eats his own lips, turns and pockets the card, “If you see this man again, you let me know, first thing. Please, Darcy, just…please.”

“What’s he to you?” Darcy asks, but Clint stares at her like he’s trying to decide if it’s worth explaining, worth letting her in on what’s got his heckles up and breath heavy, “If it’s jealousy, I want none of it. These are the sorts of things I can handle myself.”  
And there, just before he schools his features he rolls his eye and Darcy has had enough, “You should go.”

“Just, yeah…please Darcy.” He says, slumping his shoulders and backing up, turning, but Darcy doesn’t hear anymore, just slips on her headphones and cranks the music loud.  
*

Darcy isn’t so much surprised to find Natasha waiting in her apartment the next afternoon as much as she is terrified. Natasha hasn’t warmed up to Darcy the way the others have, and you’d think that as much as the testosterone levels would mean the women stick together, Darcy’s pretty sure that Natasha would rather eat her for lunch. It doesn’t help that she feels insignificant next to her, shrewd perfection in rather sensible boots.

“So, you’re a new addition to the decor,” Darcy says, trying to get cool into her voice, laying down her bag, “And I’m pretty sure I didn’t order a redheaded spy tonight so…”

“Sit.” Natasha orders. Darcy comes over to the couch and sits. “I am not unaccustomed to dealing with Clint being frustrated.” Oh, oh…that’s right, those two are inseparable, of course he vents to her and oh shit, this is not going to be fun, “What I am unaccustomed to is having to explain to him, because he is generally not an idiot, is how easy it is to misconstrue his questioning. Clint does not understand some of the realities of womanhood.”

This…is not quite what she expected, so she rolls with it. “I doubt Clint’s been called a whore for not smiling at someone catcalling.”

“No, for other reasons, but never that.” Natasha’s smile is feral and dangerous, “But you still do not understand why he was getting upset.”

“You going to tell me?” Darcy asks, but Natasha shakes her head.

“No, it’s not mine to tell, you have to work that out with him.” Natasha kicks off her shoes, lining them up against the couch, making herself comfortable. It’s unnerving, but Darcy has decided to calm the fuck down, because hey girl talk that doesn’t involve astrophysics. She can totally get behind that. “Since you haven’t attempted to kick me out I am going to assume that you actually do like Clint and that you are hoping this rift is temporary?”

Okay, girl talk with lots of directness and syllables, “I think so. I don’t like to jerk people around, so yeah, I like him. I want to see where this going, but I haven’t...haven’t been too sure about, I don’t know. Like there’s some sign in him that I’m going to see and I’ll just know that it’s safe to take that leap.”

The feral grin turns into exasperation, “I take that back, you both are idiots.” And it’s…fond, and it’s weird because her whole manner just shifts from I am a great and terrifying figure to, my friends are morons and I love them, “Here is a fundamental truth about Clint that you apparently can’t read. Clint falls hard, fast, sparingly and whole-heartedly. He’s going off of your cues for what the relationship is. If he’s stuck it out so far, you’re someone he’s fallen for. You would also be the first…” and Natasha is at a loss for words for a moment, “civilian, it’s not quite the right word, but it will do, he’s fallen for.”

“So what, this is him overcompensating? Because he needs to protect me? I told him I’m so over that shit.”

“No, this is more to do with you not having the same instincts the rest of us have had trained into us, “ Darcy scoffs and rolls her head against the couch cushion, “I may not be able to tell his story, but I will tell you this much, if he’s running towards overprotective on you, it’s because he’s unsure what you can handle. This is not an insult,” Natasha points out leaning in close, “because our instincts are also a curse.”

“So if he’s reading off of me for how to approach this whole relationship thing….”

“Then you need to decide if you are willing to make that jump a little blind and just trust that he’s going to catch you.”

Darcy spreads herself out, trying to become one with the upholstery, “hard, fast and sparingly?”

“Two by my count.”

“So you and?” Darcy is not an idiot, she can see the past written on their features whenever they are together. That sort of closeness, when you part well enough, never goes away.

“A very lovely woman that I’m not going to talk about. Blonde, dangerous. You aren’t wholly unlike us, you know. You just focus your danger differently.” Natasha says seriously and sighs, “He doesn’t much fall out of love either. It can be very annoying. Like a little...annoying thing. I don’t put much stock in love, and he deserves better than that.”

“He’s a good guy.” Darcy says, because oh shit, Natasha just opened up to her, even just a crack, and she thinks she passed some sort of test. “And, I think you might be wrong on putting stock into love. You know what I think?” She sits up to peer at Natasha, “I think that someday you’ll find that there’s someone that can handle the amount of leverage falling further in creates for you. And you won’t realize it until it’s too damn late.”

Natasha’s demeanor shifts again, and a shrewd, damning smile works it’s way back up, “I told you that you were dangerous in your own way, Darcy. I think you might just start seeing what it is.”  
*

Natasha only gets more terrifying the friendlier she gets, and it’s late when she does leave. Darcy ends up staring at herself in a mirror for a few minutes, brushing her hair. When she realizes she’s just stalling for time, and really, it’s time to put on her big girl pants and walk up to Clint’s floor.

She forgets her shoes.

She knocks and Clint answers the door, fully dressed for all that it’s getting late, but disheveled and red-eyed. Darcy barrels her way through the door way saying, “So it has come to my attention that I may in fact have a problem with talking before listening, and assuming and how that really makes an ass mostly out of me.”

“Funny, my conversation with Natasha was mostly about how I am an idiot who despite my best efforts, am still not aware of the differences between men and women.” His eyebrows draw together, “I am pretty good on the basics though.”

“I’ve noticed,” Darcy says, “So why don’t we start over and figure out what exactly we are talking about here, if its got your spy senses tingling. I thought I was just being ineptly hit on via job offer.”

“Job offer?” That worried expression is back on his face, but he hasn’t shut down his reactions, so this is going a lot better.

“Via the flirting, he admired my tablet, said if Stark gives me stuff to play with, then I’d be worth hiring. Then gave me his card. It only took once to know that this? Too good to be true, although usually it’s some guy approaching me with ‘you should be a model’ and not a technology firm. I’m moving up in the world I suppose.”

He leads her over to his living room, settling her in a chair, while he takes the couch next to it, leaning over to talk. He holds out the business card that red suit gave her, “His name is William Cross, but he goes by Crossfire. We have…a history that I can’t — and that’s a can’t, not a won’t — give specifics about. He’s generally the up to no good sort, arms and drug trafficking, that sort of thing. His cousin runs Cross Technologies, which is generally where he goes to ground if he needs to keep things quiet for a little bit, or scare up some money.” He hands her the card, “Feel the thickness of the card.” He watches as she does, holding it between her fingers. At the logo, there’s a hard change in texture, and it gets just a little wider before returning to normal.

“That’s…not normal, is it?”

“It’s a tracking device.” Clint sighs, leans over to kiss her cheek, “Don’t blame yourself, here, because I think he caught on that we’re together. He has a thing about that. But he had to track you somehow, and this was an easy way to do it.”

“So not flirting?”

“Probably not, but I can see how it might feel like that. He can be very charismatic, when he’s not being evil. When he’s being evil….” He trails off, “Something else I can’t talk about.”

“Shit, no wonder you were…” Darcy starts and trails off, “He’s got a grudge against you and he takes it out through the women you are with?” Clint nods and there’s such a great sadness winding its way through him that she slides off the chair and sit in front of him, between his legs. He bends over to rest his head on her shoulder, wrap his arms around her neck.

“So please,” he says, muffled because he’s mostly talking into her neck, “Anything spooks you, you see him again, you tell me, you tell Natasha, you tell someone. If he’s in town, there’s something about to go down, and we need all the information we can get. I’d feel a lot better if I could just gut him.”

“Yeah, yeah of course.” She puts one hand over his arms, and the other through his hair. And it’s all so much, him completely undone by whatever happened in the past, the tense way his muscles move as he holds her, she lifts his head to kiss him, relax him and let go of her own tightness, “Can I stay? The night?”

And he can smile through his eyelashes, she swears, “Yeah, I’d like that...did you forget your shoes?” Darcy wiggles her toes and laughs.

Things are good.

She doesn’t see the shy look he gives her when she’s settling back into bed, cleaned up after the wonderful and amazing make-up sex of her dream, not until it’s a little late, and he has his head bent and he’s taking something out of his ears, “Wait, is that a hearing aid?” She’s fortunately on the other side of him, so he does hear her.

“No, I stick things in my ear for fun, babe. Try it sometime, it’s both a hoot and a holler.” He says, inspecting the little thing, “I’ve got about twenty or so percent in each ear left after, better in my right than my left…you’ve seen my exploding arrows? Think that but with sound, went off right in my face.”

“That’s horrible, I wouldn’t have thought SHIELD would keep you around, though.”

“Losing my hearing was better than the alternative,” he shakes in memory, “Spent three months with the development team creating these. Work better than most people’s hearing, we keep trying to get them to work commercially, but they are so custom-made, they usually just annoy people more than help.” He shrugs and hands her the little aid, asks her to put it on the nightstand next to her, “I only take them out when I’m sleeping, and I’ve got a backup over the ear if I can’t wear them. But that’s been years.”

“Never would have guessed.”

“Not supposed to, it’s invisible for a reason.” He says, bending his head the other way, “I’ll still be able to hear some after I take it out, but look at me when you talk, it helps a lot.”

But she doesn’t say much for the rest of the night, falls asleep almost as soon as she gets under the covers and lays her head against his chest.  
*

Things get better. Slowly. She doesn’t stay every night, of course, because he’s not there all the time. Over the next month he’s sent to Burma, a security assessment in Chicago, LA for training, and he’s working the paper trail of whatever Crossfire is trying to do.

Clint doesn’t buy for a moment the idea that Cross is just going straight working for his cousin. Neither really does anyone else, but there’s just not a lot of movement. Darcy doesn’t see him anywhere, and when she feels eyes on her, it’s mostly just someone staring at her tits again. It irks her to say anything else, but hey, a tally sheet is totally cool right? Maybe calculate a ratio.

Harassment Math, it’s the new hip thing.

But if building an actual relationship is slow going, that’s okay, too. It’s steady brick by brick, hard worn trust and intimacy.

*  
“Look,” Darcy says, scanning the photographs they’ve plastered the wall with. She keeps trying to tell Jane that there is so much cooler high tech in the labs, but Jane seems hesitant on relying on Stark or SHIELD for her equipment, or keeping her data on their servers. It’s hard to blame Jane for that, because funding for her fringe science was always transient at best, but seriously, there is such a thing as being a bit too self-reliant. And that thing might well be printing out photos when there are giant displays, “Color different ion in this formation.”

Jane turns her head from the whiteboard that she and Tony are staring at. Tony is positively itching to call up a display and his hands tic, cracking his knuckles. “Check the run number on that photo to cross reference what we were adjusting for.”

“You mean it’s not actually magenta in space?”

“That’s actually a really complicated answer, Darcy, do you really want to hear it?” Jane’s been learning to not go full into science. Thor is so good for her.

“No,” she pulls over the laptop cart to work some spreadsheet magic. It’s photo 82, test 17…”Your note just says luminosity.”

“Looking for planets, Jane? That’s a little mundane for you isn’t it?” Tony says.

“I used to SETI@Home but then I found out about actual aliens and decided I’d rather just name a planet after myself.” Jane smirks.

“I could probably just buy you naming rights so you wouldn’t have to waste time on it. Enough cash, I could probably get them rename Mars after Darcy.”

“It’d be too easy,” Darcy starts, “to just rename Uranus after yourself Tony. After all, you are already the biggest asshole in the solar system.”

“I’m almost offended by that statement.” Tony bristles and moves with Jane to look at the picture.

“I’d say the universe, but there’s always room for improvement, Tony. If I don’t give you something to strive for, you’ll never have the will to achieve.”

“I’m willing to keep your sass around, Lewis, willing, but mostly because you look so nice doing it.”

Tony Stark harassment just isn’t the same as the normal shit, really, because it’s Tony. Friends…okay, maybe not friends, because Stark only can keep a few people straight in his head and Darcy’s pretty sure he’s not wasting precious processing power on her, but there’s at least fondness. Friends can tease, and she can dish it right back.

There’s a soft knock at the door to the lab. “Really, knocking?” Tony objects as Steve walks through.

“Miss Lewis?” She’s always found Steve’s facial expressions adorable, the way he’s both world wary and continuously baffled always at war upon his face.

“Really Steve, I fell asleep against you at movie night and snored in your ear, you can call me Darcy.”

“Darcy, can we talk?” He sees Darcy’s face darken, “Nothings wrong, just…” he points over to one of the few unused lab stations. She follows him over there and he starts talking, “We haven’t made very much progress with the Cross situation, and we were brainstorming some ideas.”

Darcy immediately gets it, “And he gave me a card and a job offer. But wasn’t that just to track me?”

“It would probably be a good idea to find out why he wanted to track you, but he doesn’t know that you know that it was tracker. We actually still have it running too.”

“But If you want an in, I could be that in. And if thought he was just hitting on me, I might take him up on that offer. Take advantage.”

Steve smiles, “You got it.”

Tony walks over, intrigue in every step, “What are you snooping for?”

“Do you know how to stay out of a conversation Tony?” Darcy snaps.

Steve rolls his eyes, “The Cross…”

“Oh the thing. That’s what this is about. Is Darcy going to be our little sneak intern?” Tony closes off a bit, and inserts himself between Darcy and Steve.

Darcy opens her mouth to respond but a loud racket from the hallway and through the door.

Jane throws up her hands and yells about the noise, but no one is paying her much mind.

“Tony, she’s our best shot at getting anywhere close to Cross.” Rogers responds calmly.

“So we are willfully going to put her in the way of what is almost certainly-”

“Stark, this isn’t one of the things you get a choice about.”

“Cap, if you go on with this,” Clint is yelling, crossing into the room in long, quick strides, Natasha quick at his heels, speaking harshly in Russian.

“Your objections were noted, Barton, but necessity…”

“Fuck necessity, this isn’t, she’s not…” Clint can’t pull a full sentence out of his vocabulary, making start after start and swallowing his words whole. He swears at Natasha, who is still speaking lowly to him, “Not now Tasha. Rogers…Steve, she doesn’t have the skill for this.”

“You have never treated any other women in this way, Clint,” Natasha bites out in English, “You do not need to start…”

“Darcy isn’t you, Tasha,” Clint grits out between clenched teeth, “And she’s not Bobbi either and she was trained…” And now she’s unnerved, because he’s never given a name to the woman, the one Darcy knows Natasha referred to as lovely, blonde and dangerous. Clint lets his eyes drop as he says her name, a small momentary tell that makes her heart drop a beat. Everyone starts talking loudly at each other, and Darcy can’t really make out what anyone is saying other than it has gotten more than just obnoxious in here.

Darcy puts her fingers to her lips and whistles loudly, pulling everyone’s attention back to her, “Hey, yeah, hi. Care to pay attention to the woman you are fighting about?” Steve looks sheepish; Natasha just looks bored, and is holding Clint down by stepping on his foot. Ow. “ One: Babe, we will have words. I like you, but I need you to dial back about five steps; Two: Steve, we can talk after I talk to Clint, okay?”

“Three,” yells Jane, still at her whiteboard, “shut up and get the hell out of my lab or I will call Thor and have him pick you up and throw you out.” She levels a glare at all of the offending party, “And he will enjoy it immensely.”

*

Darcy decides that she really needs to just calm her tits and just work for a little bit. She sneaks over to the one display screen that Jane has relented to be in her precious lab, and that’s only because Darcy and Tony tag teamed snarked at her for an entire week, and works on space photography. Or data collection, something like that. It’s soothing.

“So here’s the thing,” Tony says, sliding over to where Darcy is painstakingly assigning colors to numerical value ranges, “Your incredibly backwards tech boyfriend isn’t wrong.”

She usually tries to give Tony the benefit of the doubt, because he’s a product of his upbringing, and a good guy. A good guy with very little concept of reality. This is the guy who, after being kidnapped and tortured, instead of dealing with his well-deserved issues with a therapist, instead builds himself a flying suit of armor to right wrongs. Dude isn’t even working within the same scale as Darcy is.

But her patience has limits, “I don’t know if he actually made one back there.” She scoffs, “He pretty much only said I wasn’t Natasha. And well, duh.”

“I’m pretty sure he would have made a point eventually. He’s usually on target about pointy things.”

“Puns? A heart to…heart with puns? Is that what we are having here?”

“Sure,” Tony cocks his head, as if catching a thought somewhere else, “Clint’s got your heart in his sights, would that help this conversation more? Look, you guys are horrible at this relationship thing and I thought I was worse, but I honestly think you two might just cross the emotionally awkward finish line before me.”

“Point, Stark,” Darcy crosses her arms and stares up at Tony, “find one.”

He takes a deep breath, “I’ve told Pepper to do things that put her in danger of in the middle of it. It’s terrifying for her and it might be worse for me, and I know that she is remarkably competent woman. Far more than I am, if I put her in a...huh.” Tony suddenly goes distant and walks out of the lab entirely.

Oh dear, Tony’s found himself an idea. So much for conversation.

She doesn’t actually need Tony to finish that line of thinking, though, because wow, yeah, Pepper is often right at the actions crosshairs, willingly or not. She’s seen photos, heard the stories, most straight from Pepper. She thinks that Tony meant to dissuade her from getting involved, but those stories have an opposite effect on Darcy.

She won’t call herself an adrenaline junkie, but she does like a good thrill and a better challenge. She loves the behind the scenes intrigue while working a campaign, where every word is meaningful and inane, and you struggle to rectify everything that you do on the fly. That’s her skill beyond organizing scatterbrained scientists.  
Darcy is never going to be a fighter, but she sure is a talker.  
*

“So, I think we’re bad at this.” Darcy says, finding Clint waiting for her in her room, which she’s sure he had to have picked, because she has always been fantastic about locking doors behind her, “The whole, you know, relationship thing. I mean there’s some parts we’re really great at, but I’m not sure being on the same page or talking is really one of them.”

Clint has taken up residence on her couch, looking for all the world that he’s merged with it, laying with his arm over his eyes and one foot on the ground, breathing evenly and keeping himself still. Darcy sits on the floor beside him and runs her hand across the trailing leg, his arm, and finally his exposed cheek. She finds it slightly damp, and if her heart aches just a little more than she ever expected at the thought of her guy coming here and breaking down.

“Hey, come on babe, we should try this again. Talking, us.” His other arm reaches out and he combs his fingers through her hair, “I can start if you’d like, you big strong silent type.” And even that draws out a wordless jab and he moves her head up and down. “Fine then, I think you need to let me hear things out before you try to squash them down. I will listen to you, because hello, risk assessment is what you are good at, but charging in like you have some sort of veto power? I will speak for myself and make my own choices.”

Darcy keeps rambling because Clint hasn’t moved at all except to stroke her hair in long, lingering circles. She’s struck by the way the rest of his body is still and that his eyes are probably wide open underneath his arm, just aware and taking every reaction in.

“I’m not good at all,” Clint finally says, his voice rough, “If she’s in a truthful mood, ask Natasha about that. And oh god, Bobbi…we were forever in an argument. Great at falling for each other, not great at sustaining that.” He’s not quite addressing her concerns, but this is important, and she can listen. She totally knows how to listen, “We met from different sides of an op — actually, the first time I dealt with Cross. And we got married too quick and then brought her home to SHIELD.” His hand slinks down to Darcy’s neck, his fingers delicate on her skin, passing the curve there, the line of her jaw, a careful exploration. Making sure she’s still there as the bare remnant of a smile softens his expression “It was a whirlwind of a marriage, seemed as if we were together as much as we were on the rails, and always trying to make it work.” He slides himself upright, only to fall into her, wrapping his arms around her, burying himself in the crook of her neck.

“You know Clint, when you decide to talk, you sure can talk a lot,” Darcy breathes out, lilting her voice in humor.

“It’s a gift. I share it with you.” He snarks back, the impulse for a smart mouth stronger than talking about feelings and history.

Darcy swallows as she asks the question she’s pretty sure she knows the answer to, “What happened?”

“That first time we met, what’s when I had to get these,” he tugs at his ear, “Cross is nastier, with more interesting tricks than your average drug or arms runner. But having Bobbi there; man, she just…I had her to think about while I was getting adjusted, while SHIELD decided they weren’t going to just turn me out and got me the hearing aides instead.” He shakes his head, holds Darcy even closer, “We were put on ops together, I work well with women, I guess. And…she died. Protecting me. We were on the outs right then, probably heading to divorce and she protected me. I love that woman.”

Present tense, “It’s alright to still love her, Clint.” She leans up and tilts her head to kiss him. He’s being very physical, she should return and reassure. Clint is physical to begin with, prefers touch and action to words, so yeah, it makes sense that he needs the press of her lips and soft skin to keep going.

But he laughs into the kiss, “Babe, I’m still in love with Natasha. I don’t think I really ever fall out of love.” And isn’t that the truth. She can see it in every interaction he has with Natasha; that sort of love and respect doesn’t stop just because the relationship does, and really it shouldn’t.

You get into relationships for reasons, Darcy knows, sometimes you think they are going to fix you, sometimes you want them to destroy you, and sometimes you just let them build yourselves together. What’s so terrifying is that she thinks this might just be the latter. She’s never worked this hard before to keep a relationship going.

College, she wouldn’t be here right now. She’d be gone.

“So when Cap brought up that plan, I think all I could see was Bobbi and the end, over and over again. And I don’t think I could survive that again, not you.”

“So we will just have to make sure that it doesn’t. But if your only concern is fear, and yes, it’s a righteous fear, one that I share, we can work through that. Because getting this guy out of the way seems a lot important. Do you think you can provide for my safety?” Darcy moves his arms, turns completely around on the floor to face Clint, “Because I don’t think Steve would have even brought it up if he thought there was a better way, and you know that.”

“Cap doesn’t always have perfect ideas,” Clint mutters in lieu of agreeing with her. Oh well, she likes stubborn. She’s pretty good at it herself.

“So let’s make it better.”

*

“Full monitor,” Clint says in full stubborn mode, “We can trust Darcy not to make mistakes just as much as I trust Cross to have something already set up.”

“I was planning on her having a comm and a wire.” Steve counters, “Much more and there’s more chance that she’ll be found out.”

“I get my taser right?” Darcy interjects, “Because I’m pretty good with it. I can handle myself. What do you need me to grab?”

“Files,” Steve hands her a tablet, “Yours says you are halfway decent into breaking into computer systems, think you can get into this?”

Darcy looks over the mission details and a listing of what she’s looking for, “ I…think so? Might take a little time, depending on their security and where it’s located. But yeah, I think so.”

“You’ll be on comm, so you can talk to us while you do so, we can back you up there.” Clint says. He’s still not happy about this, but he’s swallowing down his instinct to burn all the plans to pieces, hide Darcy away until the trouble is gone. She can tell it’s a bit of struggle, but he’s accepting that this is happening.

“I guess we better see if we can get in,” Darcy says, reaching for her phone and the business card. She takes a moment to collect herself into a frame of mind where she’d call the guy, letting her jaw tighten and her breathing quicken while she dials. “Hello?” She says with uncertainty, “Is this suit guy? I mean Will Cross? Oh good. Look, this is Darcy Lewis. You gave me your card a couple weeks back while I was getting lunch.” Steve and Clint watch her as she listens to Cross “remember” who she is. They have matching half smiles, “Yeah, the one with the StarkTech. Look, I know I said I wasn’t interested buy uh, I’ve run into some trouble here. I mean, I didn’t blow anything up like half the other people here, but management seems to think I’m not a good fit anymore. You knock over one test tube of highly potent acid and they fire you, It’s preposterous. Your offer, it’s not still open is it?” Cross gives a quick yes, saying he’s busy right now, but Monday morning meet him at the office to discuss the job, “That’s fantastic Mr Cross. I mean, it really is. Thank you. I’ll see you Monday.”

When the phone disconnects, she shifts everything back down from slightly manic to concerned, scowling.

“What did he say?” Clint asks.

“That was too easy.” Darcy blurts out, “I know I’m not that good. This is a trap isn’t it?”

“A giant mousetrap. The type with glue.” He shrugs, “You still want to do this?”

Steve looks Darcy straight in the eyes; “We can shut this down right now, Darcy, if you aren’t prepared to run with it. You do this, and you’ve got to do exactly what we say for your own safety. We’ll get in the building, but we’ll only have the one shot to get what we need.”

“Well,” she quirks her mouth in an exaggerated expression of discomfort, “Better me than some random right? I can do this. I think. Trap?”

“Trap.” The men confirm in unison.

“Ugh,” Darcy groans, “This is the last time I ever take someone’s card again.”

*

Monday comes and Darcy, for once, dresses sensibly. The comm is practically invisible in her ear, and her “wire” is even cooler, fitted to a necklace. Her taser is in her bag, along with a small selection of hacking tools, and it really says something about SHIELD’s R&D department that they were already disguised as a compact and lipstick. Serious spy shit here.

Clint is buttoning up a dress shirt over body armor, placing knives and other small weapons in various hiding spots, and he’ll hit the armory for a gun later, since he won’t have his bow for this op. Speaking of serious spy shit, his part of the plan has him getting into the building from the roof, because he apparently can easily jump the distance from the nearest building. She’d be impressed, but she’s too busy not being nervous. Because she’s not. She’s drumming her fingers and checking her hair a dozen times in a half hour because hey, hair goes out of place.

“Nervous?” Clint says unnecessary things. Because he’s Clint and he likes to voice the obvious. So she shoots him a glare. “Hey, just asking, peaches. You are going to be okay. Get in, make nice, get the data and get out.”

“Make nice with good arms dealer that’s been trying to kill you for the past, oh, how many years?” Darcy counters, a little on edge.

“To be fair, I’ve been trying to kill him just as long. And I would have succeeded too,” he says, “If it weren’t for those meddling minions. Minions ruin everything.”

Getting to the building is easy, and it really does at first seem like a typical first day scenario. She’s signing paperwork (very carefully, she has to make sure her soul isn’t on the line, and she makes minor mistakes so it won’t process right) and shown a desk. They call her an assistant in Testing, and hand her a handbook to work through to get her permissions and passwords set. Alone.

“If I didn’t already think this was a trap, I’d be seriously wigged out right now.” Darcy says quietly over the comm.

“Any sign of Cross?” Cap asks since Clint’s still getting into position and staying silent.

“No, not at all,” and that’s nerve-wracking. She was sure he’d meet her in the lobby, but no, it was just a HR rep with a bad haircut and pants. Why is it that women have to worry about how their butts look in pants, and men can just wear something that makes them look like a pancake and call it good? Life is eternally unfair; 

“They’ve left me alone with a networked desktop. I’m on floor 20, section 5, Hawkeye.”

“Acknowledged. I’m in the building, will have line of sight in two minutes, position in three.” His voice is clipped. She’s heard tapes before, knows he usually enjoys ops; he’s not enjoying this, keeping his attention in multiple places.

Darcy grabs the makeup kit of hacking goodies out of her bag, “I’m going to take my chance now, things do not feel right and kosher here.” Assorted tech is plugged in, and now she has Tony talking in her ear, amazingly, on point and focused when she needs help. Which is wonderfully not often.

“In position.” Hawkeye says, “Clear line of sight over you, Peaches.”

“Are we really going to call me that?” Darcy grumbles, “You couldn’t come up with a better codename?”

“I’m sure we could have, but it wouldn’t nearly be as much fun,” and there’s Tony again, back at the Tower. “You’re in. Good work, Peaches.”

Darcy plugs in the flash drive, starts scoping out the files she needs to grab when it suddenly feels like her ear is on fucking fire and she has to pull out her comm. It’s not on fire, but it’s generating a lot of feedback and screeching and it’s going to draw attention in a moment.

She concentrates on pulling the files, and is nearly done when she sees it, sees the keylogger and the coding that means this computer may be networked, but it most certainly is being watched. That’s it, Darcy thinks, this just got too dangerous with no connection to the rest of the team. Everything gets pulled out and pushed into her bag, and screw removing anything properly. She’s halfway down the hall when she’s pushed into a conference room by two very underwhelming security guards. With a bit of a scuffle, she tasers one and just straight out clocks the other, because, wow, they must outsource their security firm. Not exactly the fighting types and she breaks out into a run, not caring that she’s made very obvious.

She needs out now, and when she chooses stairs over the elevator, that’s probably where she made her mistake. At least, that’s what she thinks when she wakes up after being laid out by someone who is not a rent a cop.

It’s very confusing when she wakes up, because she’s in a large office, and she’s not tied up, and she’s not really hurt either. She’s pretty sure that those are things that are generally supposed to happen in this sort of situation. She runs the mental calculations, knows that Clint’s in the building somewhere, that Cap was just outside and is sure to be in here by now.

“Oh good, you are awake.” There’s only one other person in the room, and that suit guy, William Cross —Crossfire, her brain supplies, and yep, red suited and holding some strange looking device. “That will make the next steps go a lot quicker.”

Darcy can see the door from where she is, and weighs the probability of just what is behind the door. But she can also see out the windows and that she’s dozens of stories above the ground. She’d never make it out without getting caught. So it’s a waiting game to be extracted then.

“I should have known I’d never make it out of the trap.” She grumbles, and hears a soft noise above her and a ceiling panel moves.

“You think this was a trap for you?” Crossfire smirks, “You are convenient, and by the way, not bad work with the computer. That will be very useful if I keep you around afterwards.”

“Afterwards?” Darcy starts but the ceiling panel falls in front of her, along with Hawkeye, who makes a quick recovery and train his gun on Crossfire.

“Miss me?” he says, “You’ve got me here now.”

“Your new girl is pretty, Hawkeye. Not my type, too young, but pretty.” Crossfire says,

“Shame that whatever you had going on is going to end so soon.” He holds out the device, presses the top of it, “You see, for us, this won’t have any effect. Our ears quite simply, can’t hear it at all. But Ms Lewis here.”

It feels funny, a thrumming in her ears at first. Insistent, and pressing against her ears does nothing to release it, to make it go away. The thrum starts coursing through her, building bricks against her brain and against her eyes. Tunnel vision, and like she’s being rebuilt and shut off at the same time.

“Clint.” She says, and her voice sounds so far away to herself. There’s no pain at all here, but she’s locked up. When Clint looks at her, all she can see is horror and despair coming off of him in waves.

*

In the part of his brain that isn’t screaming, he watches with a clinical detachment as the knowing glint in Darcy’s eye, the part of her that just always keeps going disappears. That part of him bookmarks the image, the description and the wonder of “Is that what I looked like.”

“The last time we met, this wasn’t quite ready, as I am sure you remember. Nasty mess your co-workers made. How did you and, what was her precious name? Mockingbird, yes, well, I know how you survived.” Crossfire mocks and smiles at Darcy, “What are they calling you?”

Her voice is pitched higher, softer and pliant, “Peaches.” But as Crossfire calls her over to stand in front of him, as if the smaller woman would make a decent human shield, he can tell her movements are met with some resistance. She’s not completely under, but this might be worse, she’s aware.

“Works via soundwaves, but ones that are outside a frequency that we generally are tuned to. Unfortunately, I’d never be able to get you under. How did that other bird escape the slow bleed?”

Clint answers, firm and tight, and not a tremble to his hands. He just needs to wait this out, “She wasn’t in the room. Came in afterwards. Your brainwashing thingy doesn’t have a big range, I’m guessing.”

Fight it, that’s all he can think, and he mouths the words as she’s handed a gun and it’s aimed at him. Clint readjusts his line of shot for Cross’s head, watches as Darcy’s breathing becomes more and ragged, because that is his woman, who won’t ever give up.

She’s never going to be easy, says a contented voice in his head, but she’s going to be worth it.

Cross taps Darcy’s shoulder as he shrugs, saying something about range not being as necessary as effectiveness, and he can see her fingers start to move on the trigger. She’s moving slowly and restrained, hands shivering as if she were coming out of thawing ice.

“I wouldn’t call it brainwashing. She’s all there, all able to watch this happen. It’s more of a body control and compelling device. Her brain is perfectly hers, there’s just a block that makes its use mine.”

Provided they both get out of this. His comm suddenly leaps back into action with a “Hey, Katniss, duck”, and Cap’s shield breaks through the window, followed shortly by Iron Man and the Cap himself.

It’s not much of a scuffle, really. Cross throws Darcy to the ground, and his head meets vibranium and is knocked out and contained in mere moments. And Clint’s got Darcy, propped up against him like a rag doll, her hair undone and spread out against his chest. “Get her home, Stark, and take that,” he points to Cross’s device, “with you.”

*

It takes three days to get Darcy back to her own recognizance, and under only her own power, and damn it, each one of those building blocks that went up so effortlessly are painful as Stark reverse engineers Cross’s device and tears them down.

But it’s not entirely the breakdown of the device that brings her back to the front of her own head. The room she’s put into is bare and medical, but the company. She’s pretty sure Clint only sleeps when she does, and she doesn’t. Can’t bear the loss of control as she’s just barely able to glimpse it again. She’s able to move on her own locomotion as her mind just freaks the hell out.

And sometimes, it’s just like waking up under the table, where this started, with a strong arm over her frenetic and frantic limbs, the pulling weight a steady comfort against so much input invading her. It’s Clint’s voice in her ear, not telling her to do anything, just a steady assurance that she’s okay, she’s beautiful, that she’ll come back.

When it’s over, it’s over. She won’t be herself for a little while, and that’s okay, because she’s back in the drivers seat again and released to her own apartment.

“Should start a club,” she says, half asleep, still fighting that loss. Darcy keeps jerking awake just at the moment of sleep, but is refusing to take anything for it, “Start a club, you, Selvig, me, Natasha too, if I’m hearing the right rumors. Club for the former brainwashed. We can take notes and compare and contrast.”

“It’s going to be an awfully big club.” Clint says, tightly amused. Probably just happy she’s speaking normally again. Well, normal for her, bouncing her thoughts around in a head that’s entirely her own again.

“We can rent out a bigger room.”

She’s been leaning against him, back pressed against his chest, her body a straight line, but settled between his legs in her bed. She draws her legs out, trying to relax into the warmth he offers, but it seems that when she does, it only transfers into him.

“Out with it,” she says, and its wonderful to hear her voice like she’s supposed to hear it, instead of the tin can feeling, the echo inside herself, “Spit it out, and then we try to sleep.”

“I’d understand, you know, if after all this, you wanted to leave and not come back.” And there it is, that torn all like asunder feeling as she considers it for just a moment, that threatens to overwhelm her, the thought of being away from here, away from Clint. She’s never felt that crazy making love before, and thinks that this just might be it.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She says, curling up completely. It takes awhile, but they sleep.


End file.
